Standardized Quarterly Enhancements to Help MSPs Evolve Business

Dec 19, 2017

Effective communication is a critical piece of every business. Change can be intimidating, but it’s necessary to evolve a managed services business. When communicating changes it is important to ensure all parties understand the what, why, how and what’s in it for them. This keeps everyone on the same page and confident in the direction of the business.

As Collabrance grows, we release changes every quarter in efforts to enhance our offering and partnerships. At Collabrance we have a both an internal and external streamlined change process for these quarterly additions and updates to make it easy for everyone. We encourage other businesses to follow similar processes who also proactively make strategic changes to evolve their business

Internal Rollout Process

At Collabrance, we have a quarterly meeting with our internal team where we outline all changes for the upcoming quarter. Being mindful of coverage, we schedule two different meetings so everyone to attend without neglecting customers. The two groups meet for 30 minutes where there is open dialogue and time for questions to discuss upcoming changes. During this meeting, leaders share all the information necessary for team members to be prepared for the upcoming changes and how they should be handled. Sometimes this even sparks further changes for continuous improvement. Every change is then documented and stored for future reference.

External Rollout Process

We provide partners a 30 day notice prior to all changes. This communication includes: what’s changing, why it’s changing, how it will impact them and what’s in it for them. Emphasis on showing partners what’s in it for them is critical. It’s important to give our partners ample time to understand our changes so we can welcome feedback prior to enhancements automatically going live. Also, before the changes go into effect, we invite all of our partners to our Quarterly Enhancements Webinar where our Director of Product Development, and Director of Service Delivery, review in-depth the what, why, how and value of the next quarter changes. Finally, on the go-live date of changes, we send a reminder email to all partner contacts reiterating the changes are live and in effect, and where they can find the updated documents. Changes are also documented on our Partner Portal where they can go back for review if needed. Partners appreciate the proactive communication and opportunity to discuss the changes.

This consistent communication and rollout for ongoing enhancements allows us to stay up to date with the ongoing changes in the IT world and ensure everyone is on the same page. As a Master MSP, regular enhancements are necessary to provide an effective managed IT services offering to our partners and their end-user subscribers. Think about how you release enhancements to your team and customers and if there are better ways to streamline your process so everyone can adjust to the changes more easily.

About The Author

Hannah Erb

Hannah Erb, an Account Executive for Collabrance, is responsible for providing business planning, education, training, and sales assistance to partners. She is also responsible for originating and onboarding new MSP partners onto the Collabrance platform which include discussions with C-Levels on how to help them achieve greater success. Hannah started at Collabrance in 2013 and developed her role to what it has evolved to today. In 2014, Hannah was nominated by her peers and won Rookie of the Year, and in 2018 became a member of the 100% Sales Achievement Club at GreatAmerica. She was also nominated as the Young Leader for the Cannata Report in 2017. Hannah earned her business degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the University of Iowa.

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Collabrance, a Master MSP, helps Service Providers profitably scale their Managed IT Services business faster and with fewer risks while maintaining a 97%+ Customer Satisfaction Rate to help enhance their strong reputation.